It was a beautiful night at Nationals Park, with a game time temperature of 73 degrees and a crowd of 17,153 on hand to watch a classic pitchers’ duel between the Nationals’ John Lannan and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Pedro Martinez.

With the Nationals up 1-0 in the 4th inning and Lannan cruising through the World Champions’ batting order, it seemed the only thing that could make the night better would be a victory for Teddy Roosevelt.

Teddy tried a little too hard.

As George Washington sprinted out to an early presidents race lead, Teddy recruited his onetime nemesis That
Cat to join the race.

The now-familiar panther slammed
Abe Lincoln into the outfield wall, thenchased down George Washington and knocked him to the ground, before finally putting the block on Thomas Jefferson, leaving Teddy Roosevelt with an uncontested path to the finish line.

A biased Nationals Park crowd cheered Teddy’s apparent victory, but Screech quickly stepped in to issue the disqualification for “Illegal Use of a Feline.”

Contacted after the race, Screech responded “”Teddy brought that cat with him onto the field, it was an unfair advantage, he told that cat to tackle George Tom and Abe!! Cheating = DISQUALIFIED!””

Abe quickly got up off the ground to cross the tape and steal Teddy’s thunder, leading us to ask whether judge Screech and racing president Abe are in cahoots. After all, Abe has been known to cheat from time to time, but when was the last time he was disqualified?

And the in-game play-by-play:

Video by YouTube members lfahome and TheTeddyRoosevelt.
Finish line photo by Flickr member melanie.phung

2 Responses

What is this “That Cat” story line twist? I have seen it several times and it is confusing, and it is not easily understandable to children or visiting radio announcers (listen to the Philadelphia radio broadcast from last night).